Astro seeks 20% more subs

By Chris Forrester

Malaysia’s Astro pay-TV operator says it is targeting 20 per cent more net new subscribers this year. Helping in that goal is a new multi-lingual EPG, described as the first in the world, and claimed by CCO Liew Swee Lin that the enhanced EPG will aid subscribers in their video browsing especially in terms of VoD and PVR functionality.

“We have seen an increasing and encouraging number of customers for VoD and PVR with 470,000 customers as of October last year,” she said, “and we expect to be able to attract more with the enhanced features,” said Liew. “To date there are 1.8 million Malaysian homes with the [EPG-equipped] set,” she added.

The EPG will be available in Bahasa Malaysia, English, Mandarin and Tamil, and will be automatically downloaded to all Astro B.yond customers in phases nationwide beginning from this weekend, February 24th.